


Common Ground

by mirothecat



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Drama, Gen, M/M, Mystery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-18
Updated: 2018-06-19
Packaged: 2019-04-24 13:49:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 28
Words: 21,160
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14356782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mirothecat/pseuds/mirothecat
Summary: Supervillains are dying. SHIELD refuses to look a gift horse in the mouth. Thor just wants to protect his little brother. Loki!Whumpage Crossposted from ff.net (originally posted 2013)





	1. Chapter 1

**SUPER SUICIDE?** Screamed the headlines. Steve frowned. What?

Noticing the captain's expression, Tony looked over his shoulder. "The hell? JARVIS, get me all the information you can on suicidal supervillains."

"With or without hacking government files, sir?"

"Whoa. _Why_ are we hacking classified information this time?" Clint stumbled into the kitchen, the imprint of feathers on his cheek suggesting he'd fallen asleep doing something with his arrows.

"The main goon from that Hydra spinoff that's been giving us trouble offed himself. Unless that has something to do with you and Nat coming in so late last night. And yes, JARVIS, search anything you can get access to."

"Huh? What about us? You know we can't talk about work." Natasha followed him in. "What we do is classified."

Clint shook his head. "It wasn't us. Can't tell you what we were doing, but it had nothing to do with that lot."

"Wait, what's going on?" Natasha and Bruce both asked.

"That thing the Hydra spinoff keeps sending to attack us was found dead." Steve skimmed the article. "Put a bullet in its mouth, looks like."

"That thing was able to hold a gun?" Natasha wondered aloud.

"The police report states very little except that it has been ruled a suicide." JARVIS supplied. "I have found no information except what is in the newspaper article in front of you."

They all looked at one another. "Well, one more enemy out of the way without effort on our part?"

A week later, 8 Ball jumped off an overpass. Natasha tried to sneak in in the guise of an emergency responder, but was unable to learn anything terribly helpful. It really did appear to have been 8 Ball, and he was definitely splattered on the pavement.

When Doctor Doom swallowed an entire bottle of sleeping pills, Bruce tried to get in on the autopsy and Clint almost got himself transferred to Siberia bothering Fury at every opportunity.

"Iron friend!" Thor had touched down on the roof just as Tony returned from checking out another potential lead that JARVIS had picked up on a police scanner. (An innocent car accident this time, no supervillains to be seen.) "It is good to be back in this realm! Tell me of the goings-on that I have missed!"

Tony didn't fight the bear hug too much, instead propelling him inside. "Let me get you a drink and catch you up on our little mystery. Supervillains have started killing themselves, and we're kind of wondering what's going on."

"Villains are killing themselves?" Thor fell into a chair.

Tony pushed a glass of whiskey at him. "Yup, popping up dead all over the place. All of them ruled suicides. Spidey and Bird Brain say they don't know anything about it, and Fury won't tell us anything."

"Is Loki...?" Thor toyed with his glass anxiously.

Tony mentally facepalmed. Sometimes it was hard to remember that a guy like Thor had a supervillain for a little brother. "He's probably fine. We haven't heard anything about him, and he doesn't seem the type to follow the crowd or fall for traps."

Thor set down his drink untouched and strode out the door. "I would have words with Director Fury."

The rest of the team could tell from the thunderstorm just how _that_ conversation had gone.

"We must find my brother." Thor stalked into the living room, eyes as wild as the storm he had created. "Director Fury refuses to aid us, and began speaking of _horses_ instead..."

"Something about not looking a gift horse in the mouth?" Steve bit back amusement at not being the one confused by terminology for once. "It's just a saying. He means that we should be grateful that those villains are no longer causing us problems and not question why."

"But why? ...No matter. We must find my brother." They all looked at him like he was crazy. "He may have done some things he should not have, but he is still my brother. He is in danger, and it may be that he knows something about this."

"As if he'd tell _us_ if he did." Clint pointed out.

"He will tell _me_ , I am sure of it." The storm intensified, somebody's patio furniture flying by the window. Nobody else argued with Thor.

"We could try." Natasha tried to placate him instead, "I'm sure Tony can come up with a way to track his magic if we can find a sample of it. Maybe he _will_ know something."

Tony kicked her under the coffee table.

Thor brightened immediately and threw his cape at Tony. "An excellent idea! He mended my cape for me just recently!"

Tony glared at Natasha, staggering under the mass of heavy fabric. _Sorry,_ She mouthed, _Didn't think he actually had a sample._


	2. Chapter 2

Tracing the magical signature wasn't actually all that hard. Finding the tesseract had been good practice. The hard part was that Thor was underfoot constantly, checking on his progress. Tony couldn't really blame him- if he had a little brother and that brother were in danger of turning up dead he'd be worried too- but the constant large touchy presence in his workshop grated on his nerves and often made work difficult.

When MODOK hanged himself in the middle of Central Park and they failed once again to get there before the scene was contaminated by the police or infiltrate the investigations, tensions rose and doubts faded. Something was _very_ fishy about this whole situation, and finding Loki might actually be their best bet to get to the bottom of this.

"Suit up everyone." Tony tossed the tracker to Bruce, anticipating Steve's orders. "We've got a trace and it's stationary."

Steve snapped into captain mode. "Tony go check it out. Bruce pull together a med kit, and then Thor give him a lift. No buts, Thor. Bruce and the med kit have to get there as fast as possible and you fly the fastest. The rest of us will take the jet."

"Not seeing anything yet." Tony circled the area once more and touched down. "Just a quaint little bridge in a quaint little park. Oh hello, what is _that_? Scratch that, I found him. He's under the bridge and not moving."

Cautiously, as stealthily as the suit allowed, Tony approached the limp supervillain. He was dressed not in his usual armor and otherworldly finery but instead in ill-fitting sweats and turtleneck, and there was blood everywhere. The sight was bizarre, and only the fact that this was where the tracker had led him prevented Tony from concluding that this was a sloppily-done decoy.

"We might be too late again, his wrists are slit and I can't tell if he's breathing." Tony pulled a gauntlet off and gingerly searched for a pulse. "No, he's got a faint pulse. Hurry up guys, he's barely with us."

"Do you know how to apply a tourniquet?"

"Already on it." His hands were busy tearing strips out of the bottom of Loki's shirt as he talked.

Bruce and Thor hit the ground at a run a minute later.

"How well equipped is the jet? I do _not_ like his color." Bruce left his com on to free up his hands as he finished what Tony had started. "I want to get this guy oxygen and blood as quick as possible. Thor, do you have any idea what human blood does to one of your kind?"

"I do not understand?" The big warrior looked puzzled and completely helpless for once.

"He needs a blood transfusion." Tony explained as Bruce discussed the quinjet's supplies with Steve, "He's lost too much of his own blood, he needs someone else's to keep his body working until he can produce more of his own." Thor nodded, but Tony was pretty sure he hadn't completely understood.

Bruce was more than a little concerned. He'd cleaned and stitched up the (huge, seriously, how was he able to do that much damage to _both_ arms) slices in Loki's arms, gotten an oxygen mask on him, and pumped a couple of units of O- into him, and something just wasn't right. It was probably the blood. Human blood wasn't ideal, but they didn't exactly have Jotun blood on hand and Thor's blood type appeared even less likely to be compatible with Loki's than human universal donor. Bruce shook himself. He'd just have to keep a close eye on his patient.

What was _that_? A large bruise became visible on Loki's stomach as he cut the blood-soaked clothing off. He palpated it gently. That was not dirt or a stain, that was definitely a nasty bruise. He'd have to check that it didn't correspond to anything internal once he finished getting Loki into a hospital gown. Shit, that wasn't the only one, either. More kept appearing as he cut away the fabric. Finally he pulled the scraps of the shirt away and everything made a little too much sense.

"I just don't understand." Thor morosely knocked back his whiskey, and Tony silently pulled out a fresh bottle. "He has tried before, but I thought that long past. He seemed so _happy_ lately, causing chaos in this realm."

"He's tried before?" The spies chorused, just as Tony said "Appearances can be deceiving."

"A year or so before the Tesseract." Thor finished another drink and accepted a refill. "He threw himself into an abyss because he believed our father would never see him as my equal." The other four traded a look that he missed.

"Well, the important thing is that we found him in time. You can try and talk him into seeing a shrink or something while we're picking his brain about what's been going on."

"You are right, friend hawk. I just don't understand why he would do this though."

"Because he didn't." Everyone's heads snapped around to where Bruce was standing in the doorway.


	3. Chapter 3

_"You are right, friend hawk. I just don't understand why he would do this though."_

_"Because he didn't." Everyone's heads snapped around to where Bruce was standing in the doorway._

"What do you mean he didn't?" Steve asked, immediately suspicious.

"His wounds are not self inflicted." Bruce looked grim.

"And I suppose he sat still for somebody else to very neatly slice his wrists open?" Clint sounded skeptical, but that was basically a spy's job.

"I say not." Bruce shook his head, "They pinned him down and choked him into unconsciousness first. Did anyone else notice how strange a selection of clothes he was wearing, especially considering the weather?" Nods all around.

"Most uncharacteristic." Rumbled Thor.

"Indeed. So it's hardly a surprise that when I removed them I discovered that they were concealing injuries that his usual clothing would not have concealed."

"Give us a report." Steve's voice was tight. Something was very much afoot.

"Bruising everywhere, including internally but not bad enough to require surgery. Clearly defined hand and finger prints all over his arms and neck. Partially crushed windpipe. Like I said, someone wrestled him down and choked him. Looks like he put up a hell of a fight, but you can't fight with your airway that constricted."

"You'd think they'd try to make it look like he hanged himself if his neck is all marked up." Natasha pointed out, brows knitted.

"I bet that was the plan." Tony had his science face on. "But they were defeated by his physiology. He's way harder to injure than a human. Their best attempt at strangling him only halfway worked, so they decided a rope wouldn't be any more effective and had to improvise."

Natasha practically shot out of her seat. "He was in a way more secluded spot than the others."

"I bet you anything they hoped it'd take a while to find him so the bruises would be disguised by the beginning of decomposition." Clint added, "Can't very well throw him off an overpass or in front of a train to hide it in the middle of the day, and they're not stupid, they want to get their victims out of their hands as fast as possible."

Thor just looked at Bruce pleadingly. "Is he going to be okay?"

"Yes, he's going to be fine. He'll make a full recovery. He didn't even lose as much blood as we thought he did, it was just affecting him more because he wasn't getting a lot of oxygen to start with. Do you want to go sit with him? He's probably going to be pretty freaked out waking up in an unfamiliar place with injuries he doesn't remember getting and a tube down his throat. You've got a better chance of keeping him calm when he wakes than the rest of us."

"What the hell have we got ourselves into?" Clint stared after Bruce and Thor's retreating backs.

Tony reached for what was left of the whiskey. "Nothing good."

Steve nodded assent. "Either we've got a villain bumping off the competition, in which case we're going to have a very big problem on our hands soon, or we've got a vigilante, who could very well decide that some of _us_ have too much unpleasantness in our pasts too. Either way we'd be in danger regardless of our decision to get involved."

"They're a force to be reckoned with. Look how many successes they've had." Natasha swiped the vodka out of the bar. "The villains they nailed are no amateurs and they very nearly succeeded this time too, despite having to change their plans on the fly."

"They succeeded in doing a lot of damage to someone who has _magic_ to protect him." Steve looked wistfully at the alcohol that the others were passing around. "How is that possible? They must have magic too then, I would assume."

"Not necessarily." Tony looked thoughtful. "We were able to track him by his magic, it's not much of a stretch from that to disrupting it, at least within a limited area. Once they snuck up on him with the device, it would be just a matter of keeping it within range of him and he couldn't do much of anything including teleport away."

"So basically there's still next to nothing we can rule out." Clint grumbled.


	4. Chapter 4

The first thing Loki noticed was that he ached all over. Okay, that was to be expected. Last thing he remembered he'd been fighting hand to hand with some lunatic. The dull soreness made sense. The burning sensation in his forearms didn't make sense. A stiff aching neck made sense, considering that his assailant had made several attempts to choke him. Not being able to move it at all didn't, especially since he could definitely feel all his extremities. Nor did the funny sensation that there was something down his throat.

Why was he even alive? He'd been sure he was being attacked by whoever had been murdering local villains, and that person had been nothing if not thorough with their other victims. Perhaps they'd been scared off before they could finish the job? In which case, he'd almost certainly been found. Which meant he'd be in SHIELD custody very soon if he wasn't already. He cleared his mind and explored with his other senses, trying to take in his surroundings as much as possible before revealing to whoever might be there that he was conscious by opening his eyes.

This was a hospital. He could smell the disinfectant, hear the beeping of delicate machinery that he was sure was monitoring him, feel a firm bed and sheets and a flimsy garment that was probably a hospital gown around him. More material against his skin seemed to be dressings around his arms and neck. He was pretty sure there was an IV in his arm just above the bandages, and yes, there was definitely something stuck down his throat, most likely a tube judging by where he was and the fact that he could breathe despite it. If there had been enough time to do so much to him, he must already be in SHIELD custody.

Loki weighed his options. He felt weak, and his injuries were obviously significant. His magic was there, though weakened by his own physical weakness. He didn't think an escape in his state was a good idea. Although he could likely teleport accurately once, he wasn't sure where was still safe for him and didn't want to risk teleporting straight into danger if he wasn't sure he would be able to fight or immediately teleport out again. Damn. He would just have to pretend to remain unconscious until his strength returned.

But what was that? Voices approaching? Thor and Banner. Okay, definitely in SHIELD custody.

A door opened and the voices got much clearer. "...JARVIS will call me if I'm needed. I'm going to go help Tony hack the database and make sure Fury hasn't heard about this. He'll probably feel more comfortable with just you here when he wakes anyway. Oh, and there's a whiteboard and markers by his bed so he can communicate while he's still intubated." Huh. If JARVIS was there, that meant he was in one of Stark's facilities. And Banner had said something about making sure the director hadn't heard about something. And they apparently cared what he had to say. This was not what he expected.

"Thank you my friend. I am much indebted to you for your efforts to save my brother's life." Thor's heavy footsteps approached as Banner mumbled an embarrassed response and shut the door behind him, and Loki heard the creaking of a chair as his brother sat down by the bed. "I shall hunt down and destroy whoever has done this to you. And then I shall make my displeasure known to Director Fury for refusing me aid in protecting you from them. I swear it." Thor had tried and failed to get SHIELD to help protect him? If that was the case, it seemed unlikely that Thor would trust them anywhere near him now. Which meant, judging by Banner's comment, that the Avengers had saved him and his presence was the secret they were keeping from SHIELD. Loki felt a little bad now about feigning unconsciousness and cracked an eye.

Thor looked miserable. His hair was mussed and there were shadows under his eyes as if he'd barely slept in days or weeks. He probably hadn't, not since whenever he'd caught wind of the dying villains. Loki knew he looked worse himself. His assessment had been correct. He seemed to be in the infirmary level of Stark Tower, his injuries attended to, with no obvious attempt made at restraining him. Not that that would have been necessary. The fact that he was in a neck brace made him very wary of trying to move before he knew the exact damage.

Thor shot out of his seat. "You're awake! How do you feel? Who do I need to destroy for this? Is there anything I can do...?" Loki raised an eyebrow pointedly, and Thor awkwardly stopped. "Oh. Right, you can't talk. Sorry." He fumbled around and handed Loki a whiteboard and marker.

 _Feel like run over by bilgesnipe. Didn't recognize assailant. What do U know? How bad?_ His arms were stiff and painful, his handwriting barely legible as he fumbled with the marker.

"Supervillains have been turning up dead." Thor looked haunted. "All of them apparently suicides. I was informed of this when I arrived to visit my friends some time ago. They said they had no news of you of any sort. I was terrified. I asked Director Fury for information, and he refused to help. Stark built a thing to track your magic signature, but when we found you it was almost too late." His voice cracked, "I thought you really had tried to kill yourself but Doctor Banner says you didn't. You didn't, did you?"

_None of us did. Someone attacking us, covering tracks. How bad are my injuries?_

"You have large cuts in both arms, bruises everywhere, and a broken throat."

_Bruises + choking I remember, cuts I don't. Can feel them though. What happens now?_

"Now you recover. Then we fight together and destroy the one who would dare harm you."

Loki raised an eyebrow disbelievingly. _Friends R permissive of this plan?_

"They have no choice." Thor looked angry at the suggestion that anyone would stand between him and ensuring his little brother's safety. It was kind of sweet.

A door opening, footsteps approaching. "We aren't going to tell SHIELD that we know anything about your whereabouts, if that's what you're wondering." Banner added drily, coming into view. "We smelled something fishy about these deaths from the beginning and have been trying like hell to get to the bottom of it. SHIELD is refusing to help at all, so you're our best lead. We need you."

_Y do U care about enemies dying? Should be happy._

"We're in danger too." Bruce set about checking him over, "Whoever it is will probably come after us next, or civilians."

 _Y shouldn't I just teleport away?_ It was an empty threat, but the Avengers didn't need to know that.

"You're weakened, you need a safe place to recover and if they caught you once your hideout may be compromised, you need continued medical attention, you want revenge and we're putting all our resources into helping you get it. Did I miss anything?" The doctor pointed out.

_Debt I owe U for saving life. What's real not-dumbed-down-for-Thor diagnosis?_


	5. Chapter 5

"Any updates?" Steve asked the question on everyone's minds as Thor and Bruce joined them.

"We spoke briefly and he is resting now." Thor couldn't help beaming his relief.

"I was right, it wasn't self-inflicted." Bruce told them, "The last thing he remembers was wrestling with a stranger who was trying to choke him. The slit wrists were news to him. He also said the villain community is long aware that these aren't suicides but nobody else has seen the murderer and lived to tell the tale so he's only guessing it's the same guy."

"That's all you got?" Tony sounded disappointed.

"For now. That conversation and a neurological exam wore him out." Bruce dared them to argue.

Clint did. "That was quick."

"I don't think the blood transfusion was as successful as we hoped. His blood composition is more complex than that of a human, so while the blood we gave him keeps his blood pressure up and kind of functions, I don't think it does the job as effectively as his own blood does." Bruce explained. Everyone nodded, some more hesitantly than others.

"So essentially he's going to be really really anemic for a while until his own blood replenishes on top of all his injuries." Natasha confirmed. "Makes sense. We'll have to be efficient about getting the important questions answered then, if he's not up to very long conversations yet."

"Exactly." Steve created a fresh document on his StarkTablet, "What questions are high priority to get answered?"

"Physical description."

"Weapons, tools, fighting style."

"How they disabled his magic."

"How they found him."

____________

 

"How'd they defend against your magic? Made it so you couldn't use it, I imagine?" Tony plopped down in the chair next to Loki's cot.

_Yes._

"How?"

_Don't know. Didn't work and now does again._

"Was it already not working before the first physical contact?"

_Didn't warn me. Probably._

"They caught you off your guard then? What sort of not working? Can you describe what you remember?"

_Got home w/ groceries. Bags heavy, hall empty, jammed cameras + floated bags rest of way. Bags fell out of air, hit from behind w/ no warning. Did spells, all fizzled out._

"Were you already inside your apartment when it happened?"

_Yes, barely._

"Damnit." Tony had always found it hilarious that big bad supervillain demigod Loki did such mundane things as rent an apartment someplace (that they could never quite find but Thor insisted was real) under a false name and go shopping in the minimal disguise of simply wearing normal clothes, but it almost came in handy this time.

_U had an idea?_

"Yeah, if your other spells didn't work maybe the one on the cameras failed too."

Loki's eyes brightened. _Don't know when or how got in. Big guy like that probably recognizable even out of costume._

"Security footage is worth a try then. Mind telling me where you live, seeing as it's compromised now?"

The door opened, and Tony froze like a child with his hand in the cookie jar.

Natasha rolled her eyes, and Loki looked between them with amusement. " _Tony_ , I thought we agreed to be _systematic_ about questioning him. Things will go so much more smoothly if we get the information we need _before_ you tire him out."

"Systematic is boring." Tony retorted. "And I _am_ getting information."

Loki poked him with the corner of the whiteboard to get his attention. _Parkview Towers_.

"I'll have that security footage for you to take a look at soon." He turned back to Natasha, who was glaring at him. "One more question."

"No."

"One more question and I promise I'll go away. ...Screw you. Hey Loki, the loss of magic didn't cause you to go all cold and blue by any chance, did it?"


	6. Chapter 6

"What have we got so far?" Steve was tired. He'd been out all day following up on the results of JARVIS's police scanner evesdropping. Usually that was Tony's job, being able to fly and all, but the billionaire had disappeared off to do other things instead.

"Big guy, possibly with some nasty frostbite." Tony pushed his chair back on two legs with a smirk. "We may be able to give you a better description in a few hours. JARVIS is currently hacking and downloading the security footage for Loki's apartment building, and next time he's awake we're going to see if anybody who entered the building looks like the right size and shape."

"The guy has a costume." Natasha picked up, "But Loki didn't get a good look and he probably doesn't walk around in it. Lots of black and a mask, we know that for certain. No indication if he fancies himself a hero or a villain."

"Tony, can we put JARVIS to work on emergency room records for all area hospitals for the past few days? Frostbite in the middle of the summer should stand out. " Bruce asked, "Assuming he went blue, it'll be much too severe for the guy to have delayed getting treatment. He did go blue, right?"

"Only partially. It sounds like the magic blocker just scrambled it in the air, so magic that stayed within his own skin wasn't impacted except when whatever the thing was contacted his skin. He feels as though his color was patchy though, so hopefully his blue patches came in contact with the attacker at some point." Tony had a half crazed expression that caused Bruce to make a note to find out if the nature of their guest's injuries was causing him flashbacks to Afghanistan. "JARVIS, you heard the man. And if the device touched Loki but only sometimes, that means it's something small and portable and probably worn by the guy."

"Excellent progress. Thor, Clint, anything new to report?" Not that they'd had a chance, with Thor's poor detective skil ls and Clint getting called off on a mission just after the last discussion. Both shook their heads, and Steve stood up. "Good meeting guys."

The gym was definitely the place to be, in Steve's opinion. He was tired from running back and forth around the city all day, even with his super-soldier stamina, but not tired enough to shut off his thoughts and allow him proper sleep. The images of Loki's injuries that JARVIS had shown the team haunted him. Battle wounds didn't really bother him. He was used to them. They came with the territory. Clearly defined purple handprints all over someone's- _anyone's_ \- arms and throat did bother him. A lot. Even the villains that they usually fought, who couldn't be exactly considered to fight fair, didn't fight that way. This guy had not only killed quite a few very tough villains, but nearly killed a demigod and in the process made him look more like a domestic abuse victim than a guy who'd been in a fight, let alone a trained warrior. The punching bag burst under the onslaught of his fists, and he retrieved a new one to take his anger out on. He didn't like bullies, no matter who they were or who their victims were.

Clint found him there several hours later, evidently having had a similar idea. The archer had his no-nonsense I-can't-hear-you-so-fuck-off face on as he entered, which to the practiced eyes of his teammates and a handful of people at SHIELD was a dead giveaway that there was something getting under his skin. Steve greeted him with a curt nod and returned to destroying his fifth punching bag. Everybody except occasionally Tony or Thor knew better than to try to talk to Clint when his hearing aids were out unless it was urgent or he initiated it.

This was one of the rare occasions where the latter was the case. After returning the greeting in kind, Clint paused a moment thoughtfully and then spoke. "Let's spar."

Steve turned back towards him so his teammate could read his lips. "Let me guess, you want to practice escaping chokeholds?"

Clint nodded, his expression just as grim as the captain's. "Loki, MODOK, and who knows what 8 Ball's injuries were before he went splat."

"You think he choked MODOK before hanging him."

Clint snorted. "He's not dumb, there's no way he plants them places until he's sure they're not going to wake up. And he's definitely trying to frame them in ways that cover up what damage _he_ did." He kicked off his shoes and stepped onto the wrestling mats. "Come on and fight me. Talking is a pain in the ass."

As they exited the gym later, sweaty and spent, Clint had one last thing to say. "He didn't deserve it. Some of them try to kill us, but he doesn't, not since the first time. He's annoying, he makes our lives difficult for fun, but he doesn't deserve to die for that. I can't even hold a grudge against him after so much time."

Steve nodded assent. "I think that's how we're all feeling."

"Chasing him around because he turned the Statue of Liberty pink will be almost fun after this."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Consistent with the comics, Clint is deaf in all my stories. For the most part, the team is good about facing him and speaking clearly so he can lipread.


	7. Chapter 7

Loki coughed and made a face. His throat burned, but at least there wasn't a tube down it anymore.

Bruce grinned at the comically disgusted look on his patient's face. "That better?"

"Much." Loki winced. Speaking hurt his throat, but not more than managing a marker hurt his wrists.

"Take it easy on talking. Don't let the others bully you into doing too much of it."

Loki lowered his voice and found that it helped some. "Thank you Doctor."

Bruce looked at him thoughtfully. "You know, now that that pesky thing is gone you don't really have to stay in the med floor. We can move you up to one of the guest rooms and you can join us in the common areas when you feel up to it."

Loki half smiled, a little shyly. "Even though I'm your enemy?"

"Yeah. We're on the same team now, at least so long as you behave yourself. What do you say we get you settled in a more comfortable room and then I go make you some nice easy to swallow soup?"

As soon as the doctor exited the room, Loki gave up on pretending not to be tired and flopped back onto the giant soft bed, only to wince and hiss in pain as his injuries all protested the sudden movement. This sucked. This royally sucked. He hurt all over and the walk from his hospital bed to the elevator to the guest room was enough to tire him out. This shouldn't be possible. He was a _god_ for fuck's sake. The last time anyone had succeeded in putting the hurt on him was the tesseract incident, and even that hadn't been anywhere near _this_ bad. Whoever this creep was would get their ass handed to them as soon as he felt a little stronger. Not only was he well and truly pissed off, but the _Avengers_ , the last people he expected to have on his side, were offering their help. He still didn't totally believe them that they wouldn't try to lock him up, but he'd take that chance at least for the moment. He had his magic still for making an escape if necessary, and he'd spent many an hour of lying in that hospital bed plotting out new protective spells in his head. Ones that used an equivalent of radar to warn him if anything that interfered with magic were to come within their range. _Nobody_ was going to mess with his magic again. And hey, so long as he had an escape, why _not_ take advantage of their hospitality? It could come in handy.

"I am happy to be of service should you need anything, sir." JARVIS interrupted his thoughts.

"Are the Avengers keeping my presence a secret from S.H.I.E.L.D.?"

"Yes. Before you strain your throat asking, no, I have not noticed any more attempts than usual at snooping on S.H.I.E.L.D.'s part, so I do not believe that they suspect anything."

"Can you find out if the killer is working for them?"

"I already looked into that several weeks ago on Mr. Stark's orders, and found nothing except that they do not wish to look a gift horse in the mouth."

\-----------

The other Avengers looked up when Bruce entered the kitchen. "How's reindeer games doing?"

Thor frowned. "Are you making fun of my brother, iron friend?"

"Better." Bruce ignored the glowering blond and busied himself with a can of cream of asparagus soup. "Moved into a guest room with painkillers at hand and JARVIS babysitting. He seems quite grateful to us. Any progress on your end?"

"Very brief glimpse of someone in all black just disappearing through his door when his spell failed and the security cameras came back online." Steve reported. "And there are a number of people of similar build in footage from other parts of the building at other times, but we're nowhere near done sorting through it all even with JARVIS's help."

Natasha nodded. "My instinct is saying there's something in there that we're missing, I just can't put my finger on it. Something is out of place. I'm sure we've crossed paths with any number of the people living in that building out shopping and walking their dogs and such, considering it's not that far from here, but my gut feeling is that there's something familiar that doesn't match that pattern somewhere in that footage. It's driving me crazy."


	8. Chapter 8

To everyone's surprise, Loki joined them in the kitchen for breakfast the next morning. He looked shockingly natural sitting there at the table with them. What with their hazardous lifestyle, even the bandages and neck brace and obvious exhaustion weren't out of place. Tony could suddenly see how the whole disguise by normal clothing thing at which he liked to scoff was so effective. Loki in jeans and a John Lennon t-shirt and converse with his hair in a ponytail looked nothing like Loki in otherworldly armor. And speaking of otherworldly armor...

"Good morning brother!" Everyone tensed as Thor made to embrace Loki in a bear hug, but relaxed when he bounced off a shielding spell that popped up just in time.

Loki rolled his eyes and turned to face a clearly heartbroken Thor. "Good morning to you too. Please keep in mind that I am still in fragile condition and do not jump on me." Thor looked embarrassed. "Can I drop the shield without you tackling me?" A nod. The glittering forcefield faded away and Thor embraced his little brother very gently as if he were made of glass.

"Forgive my excitement. I am so relieved to see you up and about."

"Not as relieved as I."

"I feel like we're intruding on a very intimate moment. Are they going to start making out or something?" Tony ducked just in time, and Thor's fist and the cantaloupe that Loki magically sent flying at him collided with one another instead of his head. Everyone froze for a moment as fragments of melon slid down the walls.

Steve looked between the mess and the other occupants of the kitchen. "Thanks guys. That was going to be my breakfast."

That did it. Clint fell out of his chair laughing. Bruce leaned back against the counter and took off his glasses to wipe his streaming eyes. Natasha started chuckling. The other four exchanged looks and then burst out laughing as well, only for the mood to sober again as laughing caused Loki to hiss in pain.

"…Whoops."

"Crap, didn't think about that."

"What is the matter brother?"

"Shit, sorry dude."

"Ah, right. Laughing probably counts as strenuous activity."

"I'm going to say this was all Tony's fault for provoking them."

"Hey!"

When breakfast had been eaten and dishes had been washed and cantaloupe had been cleaned off the walls, the Avengers hesitated. Normally they would all go their separate ways as they finished eating, but they weren't sure what to do now that they had a guest with them.

Picking up on the awkwardness, Loki unconsciously shrunk into his chair. He didn't want to be a bother to them. Well, he did, but not like this. He enjoyed trolling them. That was funny. But he owed them a debt for saving his life, and he did want them to continue tending to his injuries and helping him catch the lunatic who had attacked him. There was a difference between pranking people and being ungrateful. They were being _nice_ to him. He still couldn't quite believe it. He didn't deserve it, he was still waiting for the other shoe to drop, but they were. Yes, he had every intention of having fun at their expense while staying with them, but that was supposed to be _funny_. He wanted the others to be laughing when one of their fellows got pranked. Being a burden wasn't what he wanted.

"Loki! Hey, Loki! Are you okay?" Bruce was talking to him. He shook himself mentally.

"Huh? Yes. I'm fine."

"You sure?" Bruce was slipping back into doctor mode. "Your posture got all withdrawn and defense there. Is the pain getting worse?"

"No. No, your ministrations have been effective. I… I just feel bad that I am the source of discomfort. It seems ungrateful when I owe you a debt for saving my life."

"Don't worry about it." Steve jumped to his rescue, "We're just not used to guests and feeling guilty that we don't know how to be proper hosts. It would be rude of us to run off and leave you bored or in need of something."

Thor laughed. "Indeed, we do not wish you to be bored! You are terrifying indeed when bored! Remember that time when we were waiting for Father to get through talking to the messenger from Vanaheim and..."

Loki blushed bright red. "Thor! Shut it!"


	9. Chapter 9

"What're you up to?" Steve stopped in the living room on seeing Loki and Thor watching a movie.

Thor practically knocked over his chair beckoning enthusiastically for him to join them. "Friend Captain! You must join us! We have just begun watching a movie that the robot called Netflix thinks we would like. It is a very smart robot to make such predictions when we have never conversed."

"As I mentioned earlier Mr. Odinson, you are still signed into Mr. Stark's account. And Netflix is not a robot." JARVIS put in helpfully.

The corner of Loki's mouth twitched in an almost smirk. "Don't bother, JARVIS, he doesn't understand. Just sit back and film his reactions."

Steve looked back and forth between the two brothers warily, then accepted a seat between them in front of the TV. The characters onscreen seemed to be arguing in a foreign language, but that didn't seem to bother the brothers. Oh right, the All-Tongue. He gave up on understanding the movie and glanced between them out of the corners of his eyes, marveling at the contrast. Big blond Thor, open-faced and exuding health, at the edge of his seat like a little kid. Slender dark-haired Loki, bandaged and reclining in a nest of pillows on the couch, looking the part of the aloof invalid prince but with a glint in his eye that worried Steve. He knew something they didn't.

"Odin's beard, what kind of movie is this?" Thor's yelp of shock brought Steve's attention back to the screen. The characters were… copulating. Very graphically. _Nothing_ was hidden. Steve squeaked and fled the room.

Loki leaned back on his pillows and enjoyed the other men's reactions. He and JARVIS _had_ both warned them that they were on Tony's account and the movie was recommended for him not them. He'd known Thor would be horrified, but the Captain's reaction was unexpected. Who would have thought that Midgard's original superhero was so…innocent? This could be fun.

His first chance to have fun with his new discovery came later that afternoon when he was on his way back to his room for a nap. Steve was standing in the hallway talking on his cell phone, his back turned. Struck by sudden inspiration, Loki turned invisible and crept closer. Judging by his end of the conversation, Steve seemed to be arguing with someone about a photo op for a magazine. Well, he seemed stressed, so that was as good time a time as any for a little levity. Still invisible, Loki pinched Steve's arse and quickly teleported to the other end of the hall to watch his victim flail from a safe distance. This was absolute comedic gold. Loki was tempted to go back and do it again, but he was exhausted and the magic was taking a toll on his already-low energy. He ducked around the corner, checked for observers, and dropped the invisibility spell.

By breakfast the next morning, it had gotten around that Steve had had his arse pinched by a ghost. Tony and Clint decided it was hilarious and started trying to pinch him at every opportunity. Which made him much too jumpy for Loki to dare try it again in his current condition. So a few days later while Steve was in a meeting with Fury and everyone thought him still napping, Loki made up for lost time by switching Steve's wallpaper with pictures taken from Playgirl. And putting ghost peppers in the coffee maker in Tony's workshop and Clint's jar of protein powder as payback for interfering with his fun, after which he really did go back to sleep until Bruce came in to check on his injuries. The Avengers spent the next two days arguing quietly about whether or not Loki was responsible for the spicy drinks.

"It's been too long." The Avengers all turned to look at Loki. He radiated tension. "This guy hasn't gone this long between victims before."

They traded looks. "You know about more of his victims than we do, I'm guessing?" Natasha asked. "Some of the gaps that we saw were comparable."

"You only know about the big names." Loki guessed. "Minor henchmen have been disappearing like clockwork. They just get overlooked. But I haven't heard about very many since I've been here, and those messages should still be reaching me regardless of location since they're magic." The Avengers tensed. "Granted everyone is keeping their henchmen close as of late, but this guy is good. We're overdue."

"You're still in touch with other villains?" Clint asked suspiciously.

Loki gave him an exasperated look. "Barely. We created an alert system of sorts in response to these attacks. It informs everyone we chose to include when someone turns up dead or goes missing. And before you ask, we've learned little from it apart from a general sense of frequency. The attacks seem to be opportunity-based. He catches sight of someone on the street and stalks them until he sees an opportunity to jump them, as best we can tell."

"Do they know about you?" Natasha wanted to know.

"Kind of. I sent in an alert that I got jumped by an unknown party and was recuperating in hiding. But that's all." Loki reassured her, "They won't try to find me, they of all people respect someone being in hiding. And for the record, I do not associate with that crowd beyond collaboration on that alert system."


	10. Chapter 10

"Yipe!" Steve jumped, spilled water down his front, and spun around. "Loki! That was definitely you that time!"

Tony applauded and Loki grinned mischievously. "Was it?"

The spies came in. "What was that?"

"Loki has joined the game." Tony crowed, "I say he gets bonus points for getting him to spill water on himself."

Natasha shook her head. "You are _such_ children."

"I quite agree." Steve huffed. "Hey! Whoa! Clint, did you just take a _picture_?"

Laughing like a maniac, Clint fled the room with Steve in hot pursuit. Seconds later there were two loud thuds as they collided with Thor's bulk in the hallway.

Bruce stepped around the pile of people on the floor and stuck his head in the door. "We got something. There's a new dinosaur statue on the playground and JARVIS thinks it looks more like Abomination than a dinosaur."

Loki jumped out of his seat. "Well let's go then!" The others looked at him skeptically.

"You're still injured."

"The guy recognizes you even in normal clothes."

"You'll kind of stick out like a sore thumb all bandaged up."

Loki looked at them like they were crazy, and with a shimmer of magic a child stood in his place, long sleeves covering his bandaged arms. "But you said you'd take me to the park today! Pleeeaaaase I haven't been to the park in ages. You haven't let me play with the other kids since the accident. I promise I won't overdo it!"

Natasha smirked. "Change my clothes into something more motherly and make Tony less conspicuous and let's go."

"Got anything yet?" Bruce muttered into his com under the guise of leaning over to talk to Natasha.

"It's him." The teenager who was actually Tony returned, gently giving Loki a boost onto the statue's back. "Rigor mortis. No sign of injury though so far, and we're taking tissue samples right now. Hey Nat, might I say you look fabulous in those mom jeans?"

"Shut up Tony." Loki palmed a sample vial into his pocket. "Bruce, you know this guy best. Any weak spots in his scales that someone could have gotten a needle in?"

"Joints are the most likely to have gaps between his scales. Otherwise, orifices."

"That'll be a nightmare to try and find." Tony grumbled softly.

"Hurry up and do as much as you can." Natasha told them, "A police car just parked across the street, so we might have company on the way."

"Well shit. Okay, change of tactics, let's get more samples." Loki went back to his child persona and addressed Tony. "Play tag with me?"

"Sure, squirt." Tony lifted him back down, and they proceeded to gently duck and weave and dodge under and around the statue, busy hands concealed by their bodies.

"Cease collection." Bruce stood up and headed for them, followed by Natasha. "Police are headed your way."

Although he knew exactly where the man was, Loki made a show of almost running into the legs of one of the officers. "Wha- Oh hi officer." He played shy and shrunk back against Tony, looking up at them through his lashes. "Are there bad guys around? Teacher says you protect us from bad guys, like the superheroes 'cept there's more of you. I wanna be a superhero when I grow up."

The officer smiled patronizingly. "Well that's why we're here little guy, to check and see if there are any bad guys nearby. It's our job to keep you safe so you can be whatever you want when you grow up."

"Boys! It's time to go. Let's leave the nice policemen alone so they can do their job." Natasha called them away, refraining from rolling her eyes at Loki's cute act. Silvertongue indeed.


	11. Chapter 11

"Where have _you_ been?" Clint groused when Natasha, Bruce, Tony, and Loki emerged from the elevator and flopped onto the couches. He and Steve were glaring at each other from opposite sides of the living room, nursing bruises.

"Investigating another dead supervillain." Tony shot back. "We would have brought you, but you were too busy wrestling in the hall."

Steve sat bolt upright. "Another one?"

"Abomination." Bruce nodded grimly. "We got interrupted by the police, but we think poison since we didn't find any injuries."

"What do you mean 'we'? Me and Loki did all the legwork." Tony retorted. Everyone rolled their eyes.

"Yes, while we stood watch for the police and posed as your parents so that nobody would think it suspicious that two children were at the park alone." Bruce stood up. "Now, which one of you has the tissue samples? I want to get those analyzed."

"I do." Loki handed them over. "I found no needle tracks in what looking I did, by the way."

"Thanks." Bruce took a good look at him on his way out the door. "You look worn out from running around, go lie down for a bit."

With a groan, Loki dragged himself to his feet and immediately staggered. Steve, closest to him, jumped up to steady him.

"Hey, take it easy. You okay?"

"Yeah. Just stood up a little too fast." Loki straightened, but didn't brush the captain away.

Steve eyed him. "I'll walk you to your room anyway, just to be sure."

It was clear on the walk that Loki had in fact very much overexerted himself, but he didn't complain, not even when Steve failed to remove his hand after the third or fourth stumble. Steve was a little surprised, but then again nearly everything the god of mischief did since his arrival in the tower surprised him. Including the fact that he didn't just teleport everywhere, especially being this exhausted.

He had to ask. "Why _don't_ you just teleport to your room?"

Loki smiled wryly. "What, do you tire of escorting me? That was your idea not mine."

"No! I just, you know, you seem pretty knackered and that would seem easier."

"Magic is less safe with a tired sorcerer casting it. I could accidentally deposit myself inside a wall."

"Oh. I can see how that would be a bit of a problem."

"Indeed it…oof!" Loki had stumbled over the edge of his carpet and very nearly fallen, but Steve caught him and set him back on his feet.

They froze a moment, not quite having let go of one another. Loki was suddenly aware of how effortlessly the captain had caught him. Which was funny, because it definitely wasn't a threatened sort of awareness, but he didn't normally go for big muscly blonds. They reminded him too much of his brother. It seemed silly to him now to compare Steve to Thor. Steve was much more like him, an intelligent and gentlemanly artist, who just happened to be stuck in a similar body to that of Thor. For all that there were physical similarities, he lacked the brashness, the arrogance, the slowness, all the things that so irritated Loki about his brother, and for that matter, the majority of big muscly warriors that he'd met.

Steve was struck again by the innate regalness that Loki had. Even exhausted and injured and in the awkward position in which they were now standing (He really should move, oh God he'd hesitated too long, this was awkward and weird and he didn't know what to do.) the younger prince maintained a certain poise. He was refined, almost feminine, in looks, but still exuded a certain air of alpha male. Simultaneously dangerous and pleasing to the eye, much like Natasha but at the same time not. (Had he really just thought that?) Steve suddenly understood what the others meant when they described someone as a "prettyboy". Well, body of a god, right?

Loki got his feet under him, and the moment was broken. "Thank you for that."

"Oh, ah, no problem. Bruce would have all our hides if you undid his hard work falling."

"I'm flattered." And with that, the door closed behind Loki, leaving Steve feeling as if he'd missed something.


	12. Chapter 12

Steve wasn't sure why he was avoiding Loki. He had no reason to be afraid, not after all the things he'd done in his life. So he'd had an awkward moment with somebody. So what. He'd always been a little awkward. He'd handled it before. So why did he suddenly feel extra awkward? This was uncomfortable. Maybe he should go hang out with Thor for a while. Loki seemed to find his brother's company dull, so Steve was unlikely to run into him if he were hanging out with Thor.

\----

"I'm impressed with how well you're healing." Bruce pulled the last stitch out of Loki's forearm. "A human would have taken much longer to recover from injuries like that."

Loki grinned. "So you're saying I'm all healed?"

"Not quite. I know you're sore and your energy is still low- Don't try to lie to me, Liesmith, I can tell- but you're fine leaving the brace off. Just listen to your body when it tells you you're pushing it, okay?"

Loki nodded, enjoying having the freedom to move his head again. "Yes Doctor. I'll try to take care of myself."

"Good. The latest batch of tests on those samples you collected for me yesterday should be done running now, so I need to get back to them. Would you mind taking some things down to Tony's lab for me? He and Thor had a drinking contest last night and I'm sure he's in need of some hangover remedies."

Loki snickered. "Certainly."

Turning around and finding himself face to face with the god of mischief inside his top-security lab probably didn't help Tony's hangover much.

\----

It had been so long since Steve had been drunk. Okay, not _Tony_ level of drunk, but still definitely tipsy. Thor, horrified to discover that his friend couldn't become intoxicated, had brought something back from Asgard for him to try. And it was _fun_. He'd never really had a chance to enjoy it so much before.

"How're you doing?" When had Loki joined him? "Thor told me what he gave you. How're you handling it?"

Steve giggled. _Giggled_. "This is fun! I haven't gotten drunk since I was a civilian! You should drink with me!"

Loki looked amused. "Well that _does_ answer my question, I suppose." A cup materialized in his hand. "Give it here. I think you've had quite enough already considering you're rather unaccustomed to intoxication."

Steve pouted. "Hey! I am doing just fine!" He withdrew the bottle sulkily. Loki lunged and grabbed it anyway. Steve tugged it back. Loki rolled his eyes and didn't relinquish his hold. Steve fell off the couch, dragging Loki with him.

They were… very close sprawled there on the floor. Loki was scowling at him, but it didn't bother him even though he knew it should. The god just looked too damn cute giving him that scowl. Cute? Yes. Cute. The god of mischief was cute. Steve wanted to kiss that scowl right off his face. What a grand trick, a turning of the tables! The trickster would never see that coming! He'd be so surprised. Score one for Steve! Steve couldn't wait to see his face.

"Why are you laughing?" Loki was starting to get a little worried. "Okay, you've definitely had enough. Just because you can handle your liquor physically does not mean you can handle it mentally, and I'm thinking you can't. Let _go_ of the bottle Ste- Mmph!" Captain America had just kissed him. _Why_ was Captain America _kissing_ him. Not that he was complaining. Confusion or not, his body was reacting to the muscular body and hot mouth pressed against his own, and liking it very much.

He shouldn't be doing this. The captain was drunk. But oh, it felt good. Loki hadn't forgotten the awkward chemistry of the night before. Steve definitely was attracted to him even sober even if he didn't _admit_ it sober. And Loki wasn't totally sober himself, he _was_ still on some rather fun painkillers, he had an excuse to make bad choices, right? Right? Ah hell. He kissed Steve back.

Oh. Oh wow. Steve wasn't expecting Loki to _kiss_ him _back_. But it was… nice? He'd never actually made out with someone he found attractive before. There'd been women who had jumped into his arms, but he hadn't been a willing participant, and had he just thought of a man as _attractive_ and himself as _willing_? But he couldn't think about that, because there was a warm body pressed against him and a hand that was definitely not his own in his back pocket and his body had a mind of its own.

Loki reluctantly pulled back. "Bedroom. Now. Hold on tight, you're about to teleport."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I decided to put what happens next as its own chapter (and the sole contents of that chapter) so that those who don't like reading explicit stuff can skip it. I know at least one of my regular readers where I originally posted this prefers not to read those scenes.


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the explicit stuff and nothing else. If you don't like reading that stuff you can safely skip the chapter without missing plot.

Teleportation was the strangest sensation that Steve had ever felt. It was like being poured through a sieve and squeezed out of a toothpaste tube except… except what. Except nothing. It didn't matter, because he couldn't focus on anything but the lithe body in his arms and soft lips that had attached themselves to his again. Unbidden, his hands slid under Loki's t-shirt and explored the contours of the Trickster's lean torso. He didn't appear muscular to the eye, but Steve could feel wiry muscle rippling under his hands.

Loki decided then and there that regardless of what happened with this particular one, he _had_ to start dating more artists. It was easy to forget the Captain's love of drawing, but Steve definitely had the hands of an artist. Gentle but thorough. Loki was practically melting at his touch. Shifting his position slightly, Loki pulled out of the kiss and began nibbling and sucking his way along Steve's jawline, drawing a very appreciative moan. Good. This was going well. His pants were feeling awfully tight, but Loki restrained himself. It wouldn't do to move too fast and scare his partner off. A little patience, let Steve initiate things. Loki's tastes in many things might be considered questionable, but he did like his partners willing and enjoying themselves. Aha! The Captain's talented hands had found their way to his waistband and hovered there as if uncertain. Loki gave him a little help and wiggled so that his fingertips slipped under the edge of the fabric.

Steve wasn't sure when or how his shirt had gone missing, but the nails scraping his bare skin just hard enough to tingle drew a shiver of excitement. His hands clenched a little involuntarily, wrapping around Loki's hipbones and pulling him closer so that the bulges in their pants pressed together harder. One of the god's hands slid down his back to tug lightly on a beltloop as if to ask permission, and it only seemed natural to answer the question by unfastening Loki's tight jeans.

JARVIS helpfully dimmed the lights as the two tumbled onto the bed, shedding the last of their clothing. Frenzied exploration of each other's bodies followed, rolling about, hands everywhere.

Steve made a whine of pleasure when Loki squeezed his arse hard. Mentally smirking, Loki narrowed his focus. Was Captain America a bottom? It certainly appeared so, as a tentative probing of fingers produced more of the same results. Sure of himself now, Loki nudged him over and his legs apart.

There were no words in Steve's vocabulary for how this felt. It was a new feeling. Different. But pleasurable-different. That was an understatement. He had no words and nothing but his body's unbidden reactions, but Loki seemed to know what he was doing. Every thrust hit just right, pushing him to the brink of climax and then backing off teasingly.

He couldn't take it. It was maddening. He was going to explode. "Please." He gasped.

"Please what?" He could hear a hint of amusement in Loki's still slightly hoarse voice.

"Please let me climax."

"Well if you say so." Loki added his hand on Steve's swollen shaft and didn't back off this time. The world exploded.

As Steve came back to himself, he couldn't help admiring the sweaty and smug god of mischief lying next to him. So beautiful, it was no surprise that people built statues of their gods. He rolled over and began kissing a trail down Loki's torso, enjoying the way his breath hitched and his fingers tangled in Steve's hair as he reached and followed the trail of fine hairs down the center of his stomach. It only seemed proper to continue his trail of kisses all the way, and then as that drew a very positive reaction, to take him in his mouth.

Steve might have been new at this, but he was a quick learner. His tentative start was quickly followed by more and more skilled technique as Loki responded to his ministrations. In no time he had him writhing, and with another couple flicks of his tongue, climaxing.

Panting, Loki pulled Steve back up to the head of the bed and kissed him with more tenderness than the frenzied making out of earlier in the night, tasting himself on the soldier's lips. Steve returned it, soft and drowsily, letting himself relax against the warm body next to him in bed as the lights faded out completely.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Is Steve actually a bottom? I don't know. But he's inexperienced, so Loki taking charge a topping the first time made sense.


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok, back to plot! If you skipped the explicit chapter, you can safely resume reading again.  
> What you missed in a nutshell: Steve isn't a virgin anymore. Loki made sure it was a good experience for him.

Steve woke hungover, disoriented, and spooning a warm body. Had everything been a dream, the plane crash, waking up seventy years in the future, the Avengers? Was he back in the war? The Howling Commandos had slept huddled together for warmth many a night, but the bed felt too soft even for a cheap lodging house let alone an army bedroll. But why was he hung over? Had they used the rations on a German train that they'd halted to see if they could pour enough liquor into him to get him drunk? That seemed a bit irresponsible given they had to be ready for a fight at any moment.

...What if that had been a dream too? What if he was back in Brooklyn, in the single narrow bed that he and Bucky could make fit in their tiny apartment, still small and weak? This bed felt too soft for that too, though, and he didn't _feel_ small and weak.

The body pressed against him shifted in its sleep, and long hair brushed his arm. He didn't remember any of the soldiers wearing their hair long. A woman? He'd never taken a woman to his bed before. It felt a little indecent, but his modern friends seemed to think that sort of thing normal. He cracked an eye. That was _not_ a woman.

Oh. Oh god. Loki. He was in Loki's bed and they were naked and oh god, that blasted Asgardian liquor that Thor had given him and _Loki_ and _naked_ and now he remembered it, he had had _sex_ with a _man_ and not only a man an _evil demigod_ who was going to go back to being their _enemy_ once they sorted out their little mystery and oh god oh god oh god his mind was going to explode. Where were his clothes, he needed his clothes, he needed to get out of here.

"Only one up?" Bruce joined Clint at the kitchen table, coffee in hand.

Clint shook his head. "Steve's up. What the hell is _wrong_ with Steve? I ran into him pacing around when I got up to work out, and he about had a panic attack when I said good morning to him."

Bruce shrugged, brows furrowed. "I don't know. Thor was saying something last night about trying to get him drunk, but I didn't think too much of it. I'll see if I notice anything next I see him, but I wouldn't worry too much. JARVIS would have woken us if there were any immediate danger."

"Who knows." Clint poked at his oatmeal. "Maybe one of his old girlfriends just died or something. Why are _you_ up so early?"

"Checking some tests I had running on those tissue samples." Bruce's face turned grim. "I'm hoping that alert system of Loki's can tell me if the results are a coincidence when he wakes up, but I don't think they are."

Clint winced. "That bad?"

"We need to head off this guy before he starts mass-producing biological weapons."

Loki was struck by the funny feeling that something was missing when he woke. And that he was sore. _Really_ sore. Okay, thoroughly shagging a superhero miiight not qualify as taking it easy, but he just couldn't bring himself to regret it.

 _That_ was what was missing! His bedfellow! Loki snapped awake and sat up, looking around. Where _was_ Steve? There was a second dent in the bed, so he couldn't be long gone, but he wasn't there and his clothes weren't there. Loki checked the pillow and the night stand and even among the covers. No note. Hmmph. Well _that_ was rude. Somehow he'd been expecting better manners of the Captain. Unless he was trying to be cute and making them breakfast since he was up first? A spark of hope flickered in him.

Showered and dressed, Loki poked his head around the kitchen door. No Steve. His heart sank.

"Oh hey, good morning Loki." Bruce greeted him with a smile, "I wanted to talk to you- hey, everything alright?"

"Yeah. Fine. Has Steve been in here?"

"Not in the past hour, no." Clint answered slowly. "Why?"

"Oh, just wanted to talk to him about something and thought he might be up by now." Loki busied himself with the teakettle to give himself something to do.

They gave him looks that said his lie had failed. "Does it have to do with why he's acting funny this morning?" Bruce asked. Loki's heart sank further. "I wouldn't worry about him, he's tough and he knows we'll all listen if he needs to talk. Give him a little space to get his head straightened out and he'll bounce back."

"Nice of you to worry though." Clint added.

"Ah, well, you're taking good care of me, I should return the favor. And you're right. He'll be fine. I'm sure he'd rather talk to you than me anyway." _About how disgusted he is by last night. Because of course he's disgusted by last night. He only slept with me because he was drunk. What a fool I am to think he was attracted to me._ Loki plastered a smile on and kept his tone light.

This lie they bought. "We appreciate it. Now, I wanted to talk to you about that alert system you mentioned." Bruce began, "Do you know Abomination's strategy for lying low? Are there records of messages that you could look up for anything he might have mentioned about it?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh boy. Of course his brain would short-circuit a little bit once he sobered up, given the time period he grew up in plus *who* he just woke up next to. He's definitely never considered the possibility that he might be bi before.


	15. Chapter 15

"I take it you found something?" Steve was doing his best to keep his composure and ignore the fact that Loki kept stealing glances at him from the other end of the table.

Bruce nodded. "Biological weapons. The tissue samples from Abomination tested positive for tetrodotoxin, curare, botulinum toxin, tetanus toxin, and arsenic. For those who don't speak science, those are five different neurotoxins. There is no way that is a coincidence. We need to put a stop to this before this guy gets any further down that track."

Tony whistled appreciatively. "That's just _impressive_. How'd the loon get all those into him without getting smashed? I thought Loki said the villains were all watching their backs?"

"Probably intercepted his food supply." Loki put in quietly. Everyone spun to face him. He shrugged and ducked his head shyly. "Well, I mean, he can't exactly go out in public like me. He's too distinctive. Those types usually either send henchmen to do it, or they pose as old people and order groceries delivered to houses they maintain as fronts for that purpose. I've spelled illusions of people in those houses for some of them before when they thought the delivery boys were starting to get suspicious."

"That's sneaky." Now it was Natasha who sounded appreciative. "And that makes perfect sense. That relies on nobody catching on to it not actually being some housebound senior citizen, but if someone _did_ catch on then it would be _really_ easy to tamper with their groceries."

Clint frowned. "That's also crude. Not clumsy, but crude. They know what they're doing, but they're forced to improvise. I'm going to say they're _used_ to having access to more sophisticated things but they _don't_ anymore. JARVIS, look into every place that might have scientists working with toxins and see if they've recently terminated anyone for any kind of bad conduct."

"On it, sir."

"How shall we draw this knave into battle if we do not know who he is?" Thor wondered.

"We use me as bait." Loki spoke up, boldly this time.

Thor looked horrified. "No, brother! I will not allow you to put yourself in danger!"

Loki gave him a withering look. "We need to catch this guy before he develops more biological weapons. Besides, I'll be fine. I'm prepared for his magic jammer this time. Hel, my new protective spells will detect him coming if he's got it on him. And I won't be alone. I'll have someone tailing me and keeping an eye on me when I'm out in public and I'll have one of your communicators to boot."

Natasha leaned forward in her seat. "Your protective spells will detect him before your magic is shut off? How?"

"It's kind of a mixture of radar and a laser tripwire. It sends out a pulse periodically, and if something breaks the circle I know it."

"That's neat." Tony blurted out. "We need to talk."

Thor pursed his lips. "I still do not wish you to do this." Steve couldn't help but agree a little. It wasn't personal. Using a living thing as bait just didn't sit well with him was all it was.

Bruce was nodding slowly. "I don't like using anyone as bait, but it does look like the best shot we've got. We'll just have to make sure to take every precaution possible."

"Me and Nat should be the tails." Clint volunteered. "You guys are shit at blending in."

Thor opened his mouth to argue, but JARVIS interrupted. "Phone call from Director Fury."

Steve growled under his breath. "Scatter guys, let's not make it look like we're up to anything. Loki, go hide somewhere."

Loki turned himself invisible. "I'm staying right here. I want to know if he's getting underfoot."

"Ooh, turn me invisible too. I wanna listen in without looking like we were having a meeting."

"And me, too."

"No Thor, you can't move quietly enough to be invisible."

"You _always_ say that!"

"Shut it guys, we need to take this call!"


	16. Chapter 16

"…And one last thing. I am perfectly aware that Thor is still angry at us for not helping him find his brother, but I'm tasking you with keeping an eye on things and making sure he doesn't pull any stunts. And that includes no more trees falling through the windows of the ground offices and on my car. Understood?"

Thor opened his mouth to protest. Steve clapped a hand over it. "Yes sir!"

"Good." The line went dead.

"But… I didn't do anything." Thor puzzled.

\-----

"Really?" Natasha grumbled in Loki's ear, "You had to teleport us into a port-a-potty?"

Loki gave the invisible figure next to him a serene smile. "It's nice and private though, no chance of anybody seeing me appear out of thin air."

She huffed. "Fair. Can we get out of this smelly cramped box?"

"Certainly. I'm tired of the fair, I think I'll run some errands and meander back to my apartment. Unless of course I _forget_ things and have to go back out to get them."

Someone on the com chuckled at that as they exited the port-a-potty into the crowds of the fair.

"Where-? Okay, I see you." Clint told them. "I'm on the top of the ferris wheel, but I should conveniently be getting off right about the time you pass it."

"Thanks for the recommendation." Bruce put in innocently, "This store has a fantastic selection. I could be here a while."

Loki's pulse was racing as he strolled casually past the ticket booths and out of the fair onto the street. Going out disguised as a child had been easy, knowing himself unrecognizable. Going out not at all disguised save for Midgardian clothes with the purpose of catching the attention of the very man who had stalked and very nearly succeeded in murdering him not long ago was a different story. For all that he acted confident in his plan in front of the Avengers, he was terrified. He'd always been the weak one, and here he was stepping into danger.

He took his time about running errands at all the places that he usually went, dawdling at displays in front of windows. In the bookstore he stiffened, feeling the flow of his protective spells. "He's in range."

Sitting on the roof of Stark Tower in front of a screen showing the locations of the team plus Loki's communicators, Steve's heart skipped a beat. He tried to ignore it.

"How close is in range?" Tony grabbed Thor's arm and shook his head sharply. " _Wait_ Thor, we can't scare the guy off before he reveals himself."

"Couple hundred feet. Only just barely in range so far."

"Think you've been spotted?" Steve asked with forced casualness. He really didn't want to think about Loki on the job, it was interfering with his concentration, but there was no avoiding it.

"Doubtful, he's somewhere up the street from here. I'm going to try and wander by him out of range of that damn jammer."

"How good's your sense of his location? I've got a good vantage point." Clint fingered the folded up bow strapped to his leg.

"Not great but fair. He's somewhere on the street, 150-200 feet North west of this store."

Clint swore. "There's a huge crowd around there. You're going to have to draw him away from the others. There's an alley a couple buildings past them, try and lure him down it if you can get his attention somehow."

"I'm a few buildings down from them on the street." Natasha added, "There's a precarious-looking fruit display in front of the grocery store just across the street from them. Think you can knock it over and make it look like an accident?"

"I'm sure I can manage."

"Good. I'm going to duck down that alley and wait for you."

"I'm changing position too, going to try and get a good angle on the alley." Clint told him. "Bruce, are you still in the grocery store? Keep watch for him."

"I'll do my best."

"Let us know as soon as he reveals himself and we'll be there in a flash." Tony snapped his helmet shut, glanced one more time at the map, and joined Thor and Steve at the edge of the roof.


	17. Chapter 17

"I think he's picked up on the trap." Clint told them, frustrated. "Nobody appears to be following you. Are you sure he saw you?"

"Yes." Bruce answered for him. "Everybody in that crowd was staring. Maybe that was too obvious?"

"Try and dawdle without being suspicious, just in case the target is hanging back to try not to make it look like he's following him." Natasha advised, tucked behind a dumpster.

"JARVIS, text him from a random number." Tony ordered. "Give him something convincing to pause for."

Loki's phone chimed loudly. He made a show of pulling it out and reading the text. "Getting closer guys." He muttered softly, "Hope you're ready."

"Nobody approaching on the street." Clint reported, checking the surroundings and readying his bow, "Expect him to pop out of a building. Don't forget to drop the spell so I can see Nat… Seven o'clock!"

Loki spun and shot a blast of power at the masked man, stepping rapidly back to stay out of range of the magic jammer and dropping his spell on Natasha. Clint loosed an arrow, which missed anywhere vital as the man surged back at Loki shockingly quickly but instead tore open his shoulder and lodged in the wall across the alley. He staggered, and Natasha popped out of her hiding spot and tackled him. A ball of fire was forming in front of Loki, and he hurled it as the man threw Natasha off.

The guy was good. He was strong. Not many people could dislodge Natasha from their back and throw her into a wall so easily. And he was fast, scarily so. Which made shooting at him difficult. Loki's fireball only grazed him, but that was enough to give Clint a chance to put another arrow in him. This one didn't quite hit its mark either, but took a chunk out of his side.

Natasha staggered back to her feet. "Hurt. Hurry up."

The man recovered far too quickly from being shot and lunged at Loki. Loki jumped aside and tried to blast him, but the man had gotten his magic jammer too close. Loki dived away, but the man just barely managed to roll and catch at his leg, bringing him down. As they wrestled, Loki noted the spot of cold skin and abruptly switched focus to the metal object fastened to the man's belt. The strategy _half_ worked. His assailant didn't anticipate the move and he got a grip on the object, blue immediately beginning to spread up his arm, before the man could move to protect it. But his own defenses were left momentarily wide open as well, and in that moment the man struck and he felt a sharp pain in his side.

A green blur dislodged his attacker as a fully transformed Hulk joined the fight. Loki retreated, magic jammer in hand, putting his back to the wall and daring a glance at the source of his pain. It was barely a pinprick, but burning so badly he struggled not to curl up around it.

"Watch it," He warned on the communicator, "Poison ring or something similar. Got me with it, but I got his magic jammer off him."

Tony Steve and Thor hit the ground in battle mode just in time for the Hulk to hurl the man against the opposite wall of the alley. They moved to attack, but he pulled a gun and opened fire, albeit not particularly skillfully, slowing their progress for long enough to regain his feet and dive through the door from which he'd originally emerged. Tony and Thor gave pursuit with a command to Clint to cover any doors he could see.

The Hulk shrunk back down into Bruce. "Injuries. What've we got?"

"Poison ring to the side." Loki gave in and let himself slide down the wall, clutching at it.

"Upper arm." Natasha looked even worse, ready to keel over, as she pulled her sleeve away from it. "Think it was the same."

Bruce glanced between the two of them, and decided to check Natasha first.

Steve went to try and put his army first aid experience to work on Loki, despite misgivings about being in any proximity. There was no question as to the location, although the prickmark itself was nearly invisible. He went to feel the area surrounding the swelling, but Loki caught his arm.

"Shouldn't you be tending to your own wound?" Steve blinked, surprised. Loki pointed. "You're bleeding. You should do something about that."

Bruce's head whipped around. Steve looked down. There did in fact seem to be a fair bit of blood running down his leg. Loki pulled a dagger out of thin air and sliced open Steve's pantleg.

"Drat. Got my leg while I was shielding my upper body." Now that he thought of it, it really did hurt. A lot.

" _Shit_." Bruce looked between the three of them. "Abandon chase and get back here guys, these three all need more treatment than I can give without any supplies."

Swearing came over the com. "Lost him anyway. We're worse off than we started." Tony groused.

Clint rappelled down the wall and very gingerly picked up the bloody arrows by the feathers. "Not a total bust. We've got a DNA sample now."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you don't know what I meant by a poison ring, it's a ring that you slide the top back to uncover a tiny needle so you can stick your target with stuff by "bumping" them with your hand on the street. One is used to knock out and kidnap Zorro at one point in The Legend Of Zorro(2008).


	18. Chapter 18

"Clint, stow the samples and come back and help me. Thor, gauze is in the third cabinet to the left, help Steve slow the bleeding. _No buts_ , I need you to help me out so I can concentrate on taking care of your brother properly. Tony, set up tests for every common poison you can think of. I'm going to draw blood and hand it over to you for testing." Bruce herded everyone into the medical floor. His three patients weren't looking their best. Steve was pale and limping, leaning on Tony, who wasn't complaining for once. Natasha was likewise leaning on Clint, looking decidedly queasy. Thor had simply picked Loki up despite his protests.

"Bucket." Natasha groaned suddenly as Bruce was finishing taking his blood samples. Hurriedly he handed her a wastebasket, just in time for her to throw up. He handed over the vials to Tony and grabbed a wastebasket for Loki as well, just in case.

Clint burst back in. "What do you need me to do?"

"Get vitals from all three." Bruce paused. "And brainstorm. Severe burning pain, rapid bruising and severe swelling around injection site, vomiting, lightheadedness. Any ideas?"

"Could be any number of things." Clint set to work. "Swelling looks almost like a snakebite."

"That's what I thought." Bruce lifted Loki's shirt and probed the lump, ignoring the snarl of pain that resulted. "Figured you'd know the poisons used in the business better than me."

"Yeah-lie _down_ Nat before you pass out on me-but animal venom isn't uncommon. Easier than synthetic for most people."

"I'll start with the snake venom tests." Tony volunteered from the other end of the room.

"Good. How're you holding up, Steve?"

"Still bleeding and hurts quite a bit."

"Understandable. Quit trying to be tough and lie down. Thor, grab some spare pillows to prop his leg up. Clint, how're her vitals?"

"About what I'd expect of a nasty snakebite."

"Same." Bruce got up and went looking for medicines. "How're the tests looking?"

Tony peered at the test tubes. "Reactions not fully finished, but the direction the colors are heading it looks like they got a hefty dose of rattlesnake venom."

"Close enough. Clint, go see how Steve's doing. I'm going to go ahead and give them antivenin."

The adrenaline was definitely worn off now, and Steve was rather acutely aware of the bullet in his calf. He couldn't believe he'd gotten shot taking on a madman seven on one. He'd done just fine behind German lines fighting bizarre Hydra weapons, done just fine against an army of aliens, but a single loon with a handgun that he could barely shoot had managed to get him. And _golly_ it hurt. And bled a lot. He could _handle_ blood. But this time he was a little lightheaded. Probably because he was the one losing the blood.

Clint was playing nurse and taking his vitals, shooing Thor away to go change the bags in the trash cans that the other two were throwing up into.

"How are they?" He questioned as soon as the stethoscope was out of his teammate's ears.

"They'll be fine." Clint started cutting his pantleg more fully away. "In for an uncomfortable few days though. Jabbed them with a pretty big dose of rattlesnake venom. I've been bit before, the antivenin is almost as unpleasant as the venom itself." He looked up. "Oh hey Bruce. His blood pressure is a bit low, but otherwise holding up well. Got the others taken care of?"

"Yup. I don't envy them the next couple days." Bruce set down his handful of syringes and grabbed the pad that Clint had scribbled numbers on. "Ooh, yeah. Probably going to need a unit or two by the time we extract that. You're a real trooper Steve, most people wouldn't be holding up so well."


	19. Chapter 19

Painkillers made him annoyingly loopy, especially in the dose necessary to be effective on him. Steve decided the experience was a little too much like being drunk on that Asgardian liquor. He mentally winced at the memory. He really couldn't handle his liquor on a psychological level, just as Loki had said. Good golly, _Loki_. He still had a hard time wrapping his mind around having drunkenly copulated with _Loki_. Okay, yes, Loki was very cute. He was high as a kite on painkillers and able to admit it. Loki was very very attractive. And good in bed. Not that he had any point of comparison, but that had been an extremely enjoyable night and Loki had been trying to make sure he enjoyed himself rather than taking advantage of him as he very easily could have done. That wasn't at all evil. Loki hadn't done anything evil in ages. He pranked the whole city on a regular basis, yeah, but that was actually kind of funny apart from the annoyance of having to go sort things out because people couldn't take a joke. Like replacing the courthouse with a gigantic gingerbread house for a day. The kids had loved it even if certain adults hadn't. Okay, he _hadn't_ slept with an evil guy. That was better if still really _really_ weird.

He'd been awfully rude afterwards in his confusion about his feelings. Crud. Now he felt bad. He should go apologize. He sat up, looked at his bandaged leg, and lay back down. No, he was supposed to stay put and take it easy. He could talk to Loki in the morning, he'd see him at breakfast and he could pull him aside and apologize for his terrible conduct the past couple of days.

But wait! He sat bolt upright again. _Would_ he see him at breakfast? Loki had been _poisoned_ , and he'd looked in pretty bad shape last Steve had seen him.

He shouldn't worry. Loki and Tasha would be just fine. They'd been given appropriate drugs fairly promptly. But hadn't Clint said the drugs were pretty miserable too?

That did it, he wasn't going to be able to get back to sleep. "JARVIS? Is Loki on the med floor or his own room?" (When had he started thinking of that guest room as Loki's own room?)

\--------

Loki's restless squirming was halted by the creak of his door opening. Had JARVIS told Bruce to come check on him?

Steve half sat half fell onto the edge of his bed. "Are you alright? I, um, I realized I didn't how you were and you looked really bad earlier…"

Loki couldn't help but smile a little despite his itchy sick achy misery. "Aren't you supposed to be lying down with your leg elevated? Or at very least not walking around?"

Steve blushed. "I was worried about you?"

Loki rolled his eyes and shifted over to make room. "Who would have thought Captain Goody-two-shoes had it in him to defy an order."

Steve hesitated, weighing the unspoken offer. "Well, uh, I'm just full of surprises I guess." He wanted to take it. His leg was screaming at him despite the painkillers, and he was a little dizzy.

Loki gave him a Look. "You look a bit unsteady there, Spangles." He grabbed Steve's arm and tugged, sending him sprawling onto the bed. "Yup, bit unsteady. There's a reason you aren't supposed to be up and walking around."

Steve squeaked and glared at him in the semi-darkness. "When did you pick up Tony's annoying nicknames for me?"

"When I realized they got on your nerves. Would you prefer something sappy and romantic like 'Honeybear'?" Loki retorted, squirming and resisting the urge to scratch at his rash.

"…wait, are you flirting with me?"

"Maybe I am. So sorry. I keep forgetting you don't see me as more than a drunken one-night stand." Loki snapped.

"Oh! Oh crud. No. No. I… No. I do. I like you. I'm so sorry. I've messed up so bad. I was confused and scared and didn't understand my feelings. In the time I come from, two men… It wasn't acceptable. I know it's okay now, but I was raised that way so I never considered that I might be attracted to a man and I got overwhelmed, I didn't know how to handle my feelings and I was a total jerk." He reached over and cupped Loki's cheek. "Don't cry! I'm such a boor, I never meant to hurt you. God I feel like such an ass." On a maybe slightly drug-enabled impulse, he scooted over and kissed Loki.

When they pulled apart, Loki burst out giggling.

"What's so funny?"

" _Captain Proper_ said ass!"

Steve turned bright red and looked horrified. Loki laughed harder and snuggled up to him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those who don't know, antivenin usually causes an allergic reaction, at least according to the internet. Which is why Loki and Natasha are in for a really miserable few days.


	20. Chapter 20

Steve must have fallen asleep, because the first light of dawn was now starting to creep through the windows. But why was he awake? He wasn't due for another dose of painkillers for a couple hours yet, and with how groggy they made him he _should_ sleep like a rock.

Movement against his chest caught his attention. He looked down at his bedfellow. Loki was awake and trying to be stealthy about shifting his position. He froze like a child with his hand in the cookie jar.

"Ah, oops. Sorry, I was _trying_ not to wake you."

Steve shrugged and moved his arm to give Loki more freedom of movement. "Feeling okay? No. Wrong question. Better question, should I worry?"

Loki rolled over onto his uninjured side so that they were facing each other. "Itchy. So hellishly itchy. There is no way to get comfortable." He looked miserable.

As Loki squirmed again, trying to relieve the itch, his sleeve rode up. Steve did a double take. "Oh wow, that's a heck of a rash."

Loki looked down, and the shift in shadows revealed it climbing up the side of his neck. "Bloody bugger fuck. It's gotten bigger."

"Should we put something on it?" Steve sat up to go search the bathroom for lotion.

Loki eyed him. "No you don't. I have magic."

"Was that a threat, or… oh." A bottle had come zooming out the bathroom door and into Loki's hand.

"Both." Loki sat up with a wince and pulled his shirt over his head.

"Holy smokes, it's all over your back too. Here, let me."

\-----------

Something felt off as Bruce softly pushed Loki's door open to check on him. He blinked a couple times, letting his eyes adjust to the semidarkness, and then he saw it.

There were two bodies in the bed. He rolled his eyes mentally. He wasn't surprised that Thor had taken it upon himself to sleep in bed with his sick little brother, but he was more than a little surprised that Loki had allowed it. Perhaps the young god was feeling worse than he had thought.

But no. That still wasn't quite right. He crept closer, careful not to wake the sleeping men.

It took all of his self-control not to react. That wasn't Thor spooning Loki, that was _Steve_. Who was supposed to be on bed rest in his own bed and most definitely _not_ walking around on his injured leg. And why was Loki shirtless? He appreciated the ease with which it was allowing him to see the angry rash spreading out from where the antivenin had been injected, but he felt extremely…intrusive…in the same room as them in their current position. He decided examining them could wait, and left both of their medicine on the nightstand with a note.

"JARVIS, make sure to film their reactions when they realize they were seen like this."

This time when Steve woke, it was because the painkillers were wearing off. Something caught his attention out the corner of his eye, and, careful not to dislodge Loki's head from his chest, he shifted his position until he could see it. There were two cups of pills on the nightstand…one of them with his name on it. Maybe Loki had done some magic? Right? That had to be it. But no, there was a note. He reached out and just barely snagged it.

_**Loki and Steve-** _

_**I did not wish to disturb you when I came to check on you earlier, but please take your medicine when you wake up. I have asked JARVIS to let me know when you wake, and will be in shortly to see how you're doing.** _

_**-Bruce** _

_**P.S. Steve, you and I are going to have a VERY serious talk when you wake up.** _

…Uh-oh.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Uh-oh indeed, Steve. He's not angry, he's "disappointed in you." *snrk*


	21. Chapter 21

It was a struggle to keep his face straight as Bruce surveyed his patients. Steve was blushing an impressive shade of red and looked like he wanted nothing more than to bolt, but Loki was fast asleep using his chest as a pillow, effectively pinning him to the bed.

Bruce schooled his features into a serious expression. Steve gulped. "Care to explain why you're not in your own bed?"

"I. I, um, well, that is…"

"I distinctly remember telling you not to go walking around on that leg. And I sincerely doubt that you got here any other way, considering that the only one capable of teleportation is in no condition to do magic."

"I was worried about the others. I couldn't sleep."

"So you checked on our guest and _not_ your teammate?" Steve looked like a deer in the headlights. "I know you didn't, because had you stopped by Tasha's room, Clint would have caught you and forcibly returned you to bed." Loki shifted in his sleep and snuggled closer, causing Steve to automatically tighten his arm around him and then turn even redder. Bruce's control broke, and he leaned against the doorframe, shaking with laughter at the captain's embarrassment. "Good lord, Steve. I'm not mad at you for sleeping with a man. I'm happy for you, if a little surprised." He straightened and got serious again. "I _am_ rather displeased though that you disobeyed orders given for your own good. You could have _told_ someone that you wanted to sleep here instead of your own room, and we would have arranged it. I would have expected more intelligent and responsible behavior from you."

"What the--?" Tony stuck his head in, did a double-take, and ran off giggling like a teenage girl. All the color drained out of Steve's face.

Bruce took a moment to force his face straight again. "Well, I think you just came out of the closet, whether you like it or not."

Loki chose that moment to wake up. "What's going on?" He yawned and pecked Steve on the cheek, drawing a squeak of surprise and embarrassment. "Oh, good morning Bruce. Do you have anything to make me less itchy?"

\------

"You can't go around shouting that." Clint crossed his arms and did his best to look menacing.

"Can too." Tony retorted.

"Are you trying to get Steve killed? Thor is the very picture of an overprotective big brother."

"Oh." Tony sobered. "Right, good point. I'm still telling everybody else though."

Reclining on the couch next to them, Natasha snorted. "You've already told everyone except him. You can stop shouting it now."

Tony pouted, then brightened as Bruce pushed a sheepish Steve into the room in a wheelchair. "Good morning again, Captain Tightpants! Ooh, that name is so much more appropriate than we realized!" He started giggling again. Steve buried his face in his hands. Natasha chucked a pillow at Tony's head with her good arm.

"What's the news?" Clint asked, "And would you _please _explain why you keep asking about the SHIELD filing system? I hate _thinking_ about the paperwork bullshit almost as much as I hate _doing_ it."__

__Tony snorted. "Doesn't everyone hate paperwork?"_ _

__Clint's face fell. "Phil enjoyed paperwork." He said in a small voice. Natasha chucked a wooden coaster at Tony's head this time._ _

__Bruce tactfully ignored them. "I'll tell you once everyone's here. Thor is bringing Loki down."_ _

__"…And you're assuming that Loki will _cooperate_ with Thor?" Steve asked. "I don't think he's feeling quite _that_ bad."_ _

__Right on cue, Thor burst in, alone. "I cannot locate my brother!"_ _

__A fly landed on the couch behind Thor, where it morphed into Loki. "Did you try looking behind you?"_ _


	22. Chapter 22

"Our paranoia was half right." Bruce announced, "We found a match for the DNA we took from the blood on the arrows, and he _used_ to work for SHIELD."

Clint and Natasha jumped half out of their seats. "Used to? Who?"

"Name of Jason Hodge. Scientist. Pressured to retire gracefully or else be fired, on account of bookkeeping issues in the lab he was running. JARVIS, am I forgetting anything?"

"Fairly high security clearance at time of termination, including access to files on serums used on members of this team. Eighty-four. Apart from apparent senility to which the bookkeeping issues were attributed, health apparently improved with advancing age rather than deteriorating, or at least fewer health problems appear on the records I have found."

"Oh boy." Natasha breathed.

Steve's brows knitted. "Hodge. I know the name. Family?"

"No living relatives." JARVIS reported, "Parents deceased of natural causes, older brother killed in action, never married."

Steve's eyes went wide. "Gilmore."

"Yes, sir. Gilmore was the name of his older brother."

Tony cocked his head. "Explain?"

"I knew his brother." Steve told them. "Back in the war. He was in my training group, big tough guy and something of a bully. Competed with me for the chance to be the test subject for the serum. But the relevant part is, he knew about the serum, saw me before and after, knew how much of a difference it made on a sickly little kid. JARVIS, am I correct in assuming from your choice of words that the younger brother suffered health problems when he was young? If Gilmore told his kid brother about the difference the serum made on me…"

"You are correct."

Clint's jaw dropped. "That fits. Sickly little kid hears about Steve and the serum from his much older brother who is strong and healthy and a soldier and everything he wishes he could be able to be, ends up a scientist with SHIELD and embezzles resources over the course of his career to try to secretly duplicate the serum for himself and does a pretty good job of staying under the radar but finally slips up just enough to be forced to cover it up as a consequence of his advancing age and retire to avoid anyone digging deeper…"

"…And when forced to retire and cut off from his source of resources, he puts his brain and enhanced abilities to work on vigilante justice." Loki finished for him.

"I think I crossed paths with him in the halls a few times." Natasha mused, "I bet that's why something bugged me about that security footage from Loki's building, he must have appeared on it at some point and registered as familiar and out of place but not a threat. And really, eighty-four? He does not look that old, he would have stood out too much for me to not notice him when we crossed paths if he did. I'm going to say you're probably right about him trying to recreate Steve's serum for himself."

"You'd think I would have served as a cautionary tale." Bruce mused.

"You would think so, yes." Steve agreed, "But wasn't Abomination modeled after you?"

"Yes. Let me amend that, you'd think _Abomination_ would have served as a cautionary tale." Bruce conceded.

"If he is so much older than you, perhaps he began earlier?"

"Thor, that might be the most intelligent thing I've heard you say." Loki stretched out further on the couch, effectively blocking the spot that his brother had been about to take. "And perhaps this scientist thought the risks worth taking? Or even desirable. Abomination and Hulk suffer a loss of brainpower in exchange for their physical enhancements, but at his age nobody will believe that he's as sharp as he is anyway and once he's strong he doesn't need to have the brainpower to continue his experiments because his experiments are finished. And if he idolized his soldier brother as much as we think, then perhaps he views brains as being for those who have no brawn."

Steve nodded slowly. "That _is_ a common viewpoint among soldiers and those who admire them."

"Indeed it is." Thor rumbled, "In Asgard respect is gained by physical skills, and scholarly pursuits are the domain of those too weak to be warriors."

Tony sat bolt upright. "I get it now! _That's_ why Loki is so bitter! Your whole realm are assholes to him because he's _smarter_ than you!"

Loki raised an eyebrow. "Brilliant deduction, Sherlock, if a little off topic."

Thor was looking horrified. "Is that true? But you are very valuable in battle!"

Loki rolled his eyes. "And yet people forget that simply because I am known to enjoy learning. Can we stop psychoanalyzing me and get back to the topic of _destroying the nutjob vigilante who tried to kill me_?"


	23. Chapter 23

Loki appeared out of thin air on Steve's bed, startling both Steve and Bruce.

"How did you shake off your brother?"

Loki grinned, if tiredly. "There's an illusion asleep in my bed. And JARVIS agreed to help me."

"You'd better not be overexerting yourself with all these spells." Bruce warned. Steve stifled a grin at someone else being the one in the hot seat.

"I daresay I won't have the energy to teleport again for a few hours unless it's an emergency, but I have every intention of sleeping here." Loki dared them to challenge him.

Steve felt all warm and tingly inside. "Does… this make us a thing? Or something?"

Loki scooted closer and twined his fingers with the soldier's. "Would you like us to be?" Steve blushed and looked down. "I'll take that as a yes?"

"I, uh. Yeah. Yeah, I'm too high on painkillers to care about the consequences. What the heck, let's give it a chance."

Loki kissed him. "My boyfriend the stoner." Bruce looked away awkwardly. Steve made a face.  
____________

"You're an experienced military strategist. What are you thinking about our villain?" Clint held a cup of coffee out to Thor. "Coffee?"

"Thank you, friend hawk." Thor accepted the cup greedily. He liked this Midgardian beverage very much. "I think he must pay for what he has done to my brother and our friends."

"I agree. How do you propose we go about making him pay?" Clint swiped the sugar bowl back from Thor, "I mean, I have ideas of my own, but I want to hear yours. You have even more reason to be angry than I do."

"I wish to hunt him down and drag him through the streets as a treasonous worm who would harm a prince. I am sure though that that would not work in this realm."

Clint shook his head. "No, I don't think so. The citizens of this realm see Loki as a villain not a prince, unfortunately. We certainly can and will hunt this guy down now that we know who he is, but we can't be at all public about it. Our revenge has to be kept quiet."

"You truly wish revenge for what he did to my brother?" Thor asked. "I thought you hated him for the events of yesteryear."

Clint shrugged, coloring a little. "Less for him than for Nat. She's my partner, has been for years. She was a villain once too, but I convinced SHIELD to give her a second chance and they haven't yet regretted it. But a little for Loki, yeah. He hasn't done anything evil in ages, and we were all affected by the tesseract too, some just from proximity. I can't realistically hold him accountable for his actions back then. I'm a little traumatized, yeah, but realistically I can't really blame him. He was under its power as much or nearly as much as some of us were and since its removal has gone back to just playing relatively harmless pranks on us. As much as a part of me wishes I could, I can't see him as anything but a victim in this."

"If we cannot break down his door with an army, then perhaps we can with just us seven?" Thor looked hopeful.

"Hell yes. Though it'll probably be more sneaking in than breaking down the door. But I like the idea of surprising him at home." Clint took a swig of coffee, only to spit it out, gagging. "The _fuck_? Why is my coffee salty?"

Thor took a cautious sip of his, and made a face. "As is mine. Was that not the sugar bowl?"

Clint examined the container on the counter. "No, this is definitely the sugar bowl. And it's full of salt. JARVIS, who touched it last?"

"Mr. Stark put several spoonfuls in his coffee at 11:24 last night." JARVIS reported, "But he did not change the contents of the bowl and appeared to experience nothing out of the ordinary."

Clint raised an eyebrow. "And did anything appear to move as though moved by an invisible person, by any chance?"

Thor jumped to his brother's defense. "T'was not Loki. He was asleep at ten and I instructed JARVIS to inform me if he got up or had need of anything."

"Indeed," JARVIS confirmed, "He did not get out of bed all night." Clint thought he heard a touch of amusement in the AI's voice and mentally inserted "Steve's" in front of "bed". Which still didn't answer the mystery of the swapped salt and sugar.


	24. Chapter 24

Steve worried at first that his reduced mobility would be a bore for Loki. After all, he was one of the few people who could heal faster than Steve did. But if anything, the god seemed to be healing oddly slowly. He would spend the night with Steve, and then disappear after breakfast for a few hours, only to reappear and immediately go to sleep snuggled up to him and repeat it in the afternoon. Half the time, Thor swore that his brother had been asleep in his own bed during the time that Steve hadn't seen him. He seemed to spend more time sleeping than awake, and nobody could figure out why. Bruce poked and prodded him until he ended up sporting a tail for a day for his troubles, earning a flood of furry jokes, but he couldn't find a reason for Loki's bizarre sleeping habits. Between Thor, Steve, and Bruce worrying about Loki, and Tony, Clint, and Natasha worrying about security when JARVIS proceeded to glitch twice in a span of a few days, it was nearly a week before planning of their attack on Hodge began in ernest.

"I don't think this is the battle for having a sniper." Tony argued, "We're ambushing him at home, it's going to be close quarters."

"On the contrary." Clint shot back, "This is precisely the battle for snipers. Plural if possible. His best defense is physical prowess and he's got nasty little things like that poison ring. The more surprise and less close contact involved in taking him out, the better."

Natasha unconsciously rubbed her shoulder. "I'm going to agree with Clint. I want to run this like we do our assassinations at work. Element of surprise. Try and put as many holes in him as possible before he can react. What if me, Clint, Steve, and Loki turn him into swiss cheese at a distance, and Bruce, Thor, and Tony hang back and jump him if he gets up and tries to return fire?"

Thor shook his head. "I do not think Loki well enough to fight. The poison appears to have affected him much worse than Lady Natasha."

"Nonsense." Everyone jumped and spun to see Loki watching them from the doorway. "You should have told me you were having a strategy meeting, I would have made sure to be on time."

"You're awake! How are you feeling?" Bruce jumped up.

"Just fine." He brushed the doctor off, "And definitely in fighting shape. I've spent the past week on some magical preparations."

"You mean sleeping all the time?" Tony snarked.

Loki gave him an exasperated look. "Some of the spells took a great deal of power and focus, and I was not at full strength. Nor am I accustomed to mastering so much new magic in so short a time. I was forced to rest every few hours so as not to risk damage to my surroundings."

Thor perked up like a giant puppy. "Does this mean you have new weapons? We must spar and test them out!"

"A few." Loki hesitated, "But they will be demonstrated in battle not before. They are deadly measures, not ones that can be practiced with others. But back to strategy. I agree we should be sneaky about it and try to take him down before he knows we're there. But we should also try not to implicate you in it. You're heroes. You can't be caught having a part in an assassination that's not sanctioned by SHIELD."

"Aw, I didn't know you cared." Tony teased him. "Or do you just care about…"

"Of course I care." Loki cut him off, "It'd take all the fun out of my life if something happened to you chuckleheads."

"What are you suggesting then?" Clint asked, pulling up blueprints of Hodge's house on his StarkPad. "I was thinking put a bullet in his head through the air vent in the front hall when he walks in the door."

"Let me have the first go at him. My weapons won't leave anything traceable, unlike a bullet or arrow. If it fails and doesn't put him down for good and he turns to return fire, the rest of you can have at him. And when he's down and staying down, we torch the house and get out. Destroy all his weapons and chemicals and work so it doesn't hurt anyone else."


	25. Chapter 25

"Shit, this is a hell of a workshop." Tony commented. "Don't worry, I'm not touching anything. But fuck, he's got a lot of chemicals."

Bruce peered at the labels from a safe distance. "Nasty stuff. Loki, any way of keeping this from getting in the air when we burn it?"

"I'll see what I can do. Think you can mix up something explosive down there without hurting yourselves?"

"To make sure the lab gets completely destroyed. I like it." Tony turned to the shelf of chemicals gleefully.

"Radio silence. I think I heard something." Steve ordered from inside a wardrobe in the living room. Through the crack of the door, he saw Loki press himself flatter against the wall behind the door. Soft clicks from behind the couches, almost inaudible over the scraping of a key down the hall in the front door, told him that every gun was poised to shoot.

Footsteps came down the hall, and then Hodge entered the room, making a beeline for the door to his basement laboratory. Loki braced himself and counted three steps, almost enough to put his would-be killer in the middle of the room, then summoned the ice lurking inside him. The transition to his Jotun form was faster each time he did it voluntarily, and by the time the man had taken another step, rapier-sharp icicles as thick as broomhandles and hard as diamond were flying from Loki's hands at him.

Steve suppressed a gasp as his boyfriend suddenly turned blue and peppered the man with a stream of gigantic icicles, like a strange living ice machine gun. They were sharp, and apparently strong, because they pierced his skin as easily as any blade. Bleeding, staggering, Hodge turned to face the shooter, fumbling for his gun, but the damage was done. Some of the icicles had gone straight through him. He was finished. Natasha leaned around the edge of the couch, well out of the way of stray icicles, and hurled a knife into his wrist, causing him to drop the gun. He scrambled to retrieve it, struggling to keep his footing, and Loki bounded across the room to kick him to the ground, a sword made of glittering ice forming around one blue hand. Steve, Clint, and Natasha emerged from their hiding places and approached, guns trained on Hodge.

"You do realize that vigilantism is the opposite of what your idols fought for." Loki pressed his sword to the man's jugular. Steve could hear the faintest tremor in Loki's voice. Whether it was the proximity to the man who had made multiple attempts on his life or the knowledge that he was killing someone in a situation that wasn't direct combat he wasn't sure, but it was there.

Hodge made one last swing at Loki, poison ring uncapped and undoubtedly loaded with something at least as nasty as the last time, and Loki dodged it, slashing the man's throat in the same move.

"Set down there guys? He's dead." Clint asked over the com with the professionalism of the trained assassin that he was.

"Yeah, set. Should we ignite it?"

"No." Loki dragged his eyes away from his foe's body and shook himself hard, sword disappearing. "I'm teleporting you all back to the tower so you'll be there to take Fury's call and then I'm coming back to do cleanup. Alone."

"Are you certain?" Thor asked.

"Yeah, trust me." The world twisted and squeezed and dropped them in the living room at the tower. "Just make yourselves look as busy as possible and don't go near that part of town until Fury calls." With that he was gone. The Avengers looked at one another.

"What's he going to do?" Steve tried to quash the note of hysteria in his voice. "Is he going to try and take the blame for it?"

"I wish to go fetch him." Thor declared.

"No!" The spies said together.

"He has a plan," Natasha pointed out, "Don't interfere."

"We don't know what he's doing. We don't want to mess it up, and if any of us just happen to already be near there when we get the call it looks sketchy." Clint added. "Sometimes you gotta just have faith in the people you're working with."

"I don't like it." Thor and Steve said together.

Thor looked at Steve strangely. "You seem to care more about him than the others do." Tony snickered. Steve turned red. "What am I missing?"

"I, ah, we're…um."

"They're dating." Tony blurted out. "Or whatever you call it over the rainbow. Oh, fuck. I wasn't supposed to say that."

Steve turned even redder. "I, uh, yeah. Yeah, me and Loki are kind of…in a relationship." Thor eyed him critically. Steve gulped. "Please don't hurt me?"

"Okaay then. Come on guys, go do stuff and look busy, remember?" Bruce tried to break the tension. "Oh, and Steve go prop your leg up and put some ice on it. Who knows what walking around today did to it."


	26. Chapter 26

A few minutes later the call from Fury came. Thor, Clint, and Natasha were in the gym, the spies sparring good-naturedly and Thor destroying punching bags, Tony was sipping a whiskey on the rocks and playing with blueprints for his new suit, and Bruce was replacing the stitch that Steve had pulled out.

"Call from Director Fury, sirs and madam."

"Put him through." They all chorused with varying degrees of apprehension.

Fury's face popped up on the screens nearest them. "Avengers, suit up. I'm getting reports of some sort of alien with a ray gun blowing shit up on a residential street. I'm sending the coordinates to your phones."

"Anything else you can tell us?" Bruce asked, deliberately drawing Fury's attention to that module of the video feed.

"Humanoid but blue as a smurf, making a mess, no spaceship sightings yet…What's wrong with Rogers?"

Steve opened his mouth to try and claim that he was fine, but Bruce beat him to it. "Training accident. He's going to be leaving the circus tricks to Clint in the future, _right Steve_?"

"Yeah. Yeah. I am."

Fury huffed in irritation. "I'll leave it to you to decide then whether he's cleared to go out. But I expect the rest of you to suit up and go deal with the alien." The call ended.

They all reactivated their coms. "We just got the call and are suiting up and heading over. Sounds like you're having fun?"

"Hardly. Hurry up and scare me off, I'm not feeling well."

"Still capable of teleportation?"

"For now."

The Avengers traded a look. "You know, I think I'm not going to clear Steve to go out today. You can handle first aid until I get back, right?"

"I think I can hold down the fort."

It was nervewracking watching the others prepare and leave without him, even though Steve knew there was no actual threat. It came as a relief when he heard Tony warn Loki that he was coming in fast at his six. Ten seconds later, Loki, still in Jotun form, materialized a few feet away from him and promptly collapsed. Not even thinking about the danger of frostbite, Steve lunged to catch him.

But he didn't get frostbite. Loki was still an ice cube, but not nearly enough of one to cause frostbite. It suddenly struck Steve that he'd spent quite a bit of time near a large fire while in a form that was naturally very cold. Heatstroke. Crud.

"Loki? Stay with me. Can you change back to your usual form? It might handle earthly temperatures better than this one." He scooped him up and made a beeline for the nearest bathroom, trying to ignore the weird feeling as the body in his arms flickered between forms before finally changing for real. "That a bit better?" He was heartened to feel his boyfriend's arm tighten around his shoulders. "I'm going to stick you in a cold bath to try and get your body temperature down." He set him in the tub, clothes and all, and turned on the water. "Can you do me a favor and not pass out while I go fetch you some gatorade quick?" A weak nod. Ignoring the pain from his leg, he all but ran to the kitchen and back.

An hour later when the rest of the group returned, it was to find Steve and Loki cuddling on Loki's bed, Steve in a heavy sweater and Loki shirtless in lightweight pajamapants, with the air conditioning cranked way up.

"How- holy cow it is _freezing_ in here." Bruce entered and immediately shivered, as did the other Avengers crowding behind him.

"Apparently proximity to fire causes frost giants to suffer heatstroke." Steve told him, "Who knew, right?" Loki made a muffled noise into his chest that might have been a smart remark had it been audible. Steve unthinkingly pressed a kiss to the top of his head.

Thor surveyed them thoughtfully. "I will tolerate this relationship if I must."


	27. Chapter 27

"What's the matter? You seem troubled." Steve tightened his arm around Loki, "Are you still feeling unwell from yesterday?"

Loki rolled over and drowsily buried his face in Steve's shirt. "It's over. We beat him. What happens to me now? What happens to _us_ now? You guys only put up with me here because you wanted to get rid of him."

Steve's heart skipped at beat. That was right. With their crazy vigilante gone, Loki was their enemy again. "I don't know. Are you going to disappear and go back to being a villain? I've gotten used to having you here. I don't want to go back to sleeping alone."

"Me neither. But I can't not play tricks on people. I'm the _god_ of _mischief_. And in your world that seems to make me a villain."

"The villain and the hero. It's forbidden love."

"Sounds like material for one of your world's novels."

Steve held his boyfriend tight. "If it can work in books then we can make it work. Right?"

Loki laughed hollowly. "You're naive."

"And you're a pessimist. We all think your jokes are hilarious. If we're irritated by them it's that we're irritated Fury is making us do the cleanup when we know you'll put everything back to normal as soon as you get bored _anyway_." He ran a hand through Loki's long hair. "The others won't care if we continue this. They all know and are fine with it."

"They do? They are?" Loki was dumbfounded.

"Indeed." JARVIS answered him, "And they are having a similar conversation in the kitchen right now. Perhaps you two should join them."

"What happens now?" Thor was on edge, all but pacing a hole in the kitchen floor. "We have destroyed our enemy. Is my brother now in danger from my friends again?"

"I don't know." Bruce eyed the tranquilizers on the top shelf, reassuring himself that they were easily at hand should things become heated. "If he were dating any of us _but_ Steve I'd predict we were done fighting him, but…"

"…But it's Steve." Tony finished for him. "And Captain Goody-Two-Shoes might actually be enough of a self-sacrificing do-gooder give up his relationship for what he believes is the greater good."

"But is it the greater good?" Clint asked, ceasing flicking cheerios at his partner in favor of just fiddling idly with them, "I mean, has he pulled any pranks since he started getting laid?" Thor froze, his face twisted in an expression of horror and disgust. "Oh. Sorry Thor. Let's, uh, not talk about that."

Bruce glanced sideways at the large warrior now making a beeline for the liquor cabinet. "Yeah, let's not."

Tony followed his gaze and groaned. "Thor! Not _that_ stuff, not the way _you_ drink! If you're going to chug the whole thing, drink something cheaper. Yeah, that stuff. You can chug _that_."

Steve and Loki poked their heads around the door. "Why is he chugging Everclear?"

"Because it's preferable to him chugging my new imported Italian stuff that I haven't gotten to try yet." Tony said at the same time as Clint said "Because he thought about you two in bed together."

Steve gulped. Loki squeezed his hand reassuringly. "It's okay. He has yet to actually kill any of my boyfriends."

Natasha popped up beside them, shaking cereal out of the hood of her sweatshirt. "I'd say the same of us and Steve's love interests, but you're the first we've known about."

"Does…does that mean you're okay with us?"

Natasha laughed. "Trickster, if we _weren't_ okay with it you'd be long dead."

"Reassuring to know."

"Blah blah acceptance lovey-dovey crap blah blah." Tony cut in. "So cute. Anyhow. There is one problem."

Loki and Steve both froze. "Uh-oh?"

"Yeah. Fury." Clint joined in. "We may be okay with it in light of how well-behaved you've been the past couple years and how nice it was to have you on our side lately, but _he_ 'll blow a gasket. How're we going to keep this a secret?"

"I…might have that covered." Loki ducked his head shyly. "The 'magical preparations' that I was wearing myself out doing weren't all battle magic. Most of them were setting up for a future where I couldn't live here but would want to spend a lot of time here. So I think we'll be okay. Just, uh, maybe don't move other people into the room I've been using, because I kind of turned it into a portal to my new apartment."

"So we could theoretically sneak in and put hot peppers in your coffee?" Clint asked, a little too innocently.

"It's keyed to me."

"…you're no fun."

They all looked at each other. "So this is it, huh? We're going to stop being enemies?" Loki asked tentatively.

"Well… As long as you don't do actual damage with your pranks."

"And you seem to make Steve happy…"

"We'll still have to _pretend_ to be enemies of course."

"I promise to continue trying not to do damage and to try not to reveal myself as the culprit as often anymore." The mischievous sparkle returned to his eyes. "After all, it is much more fun playing pranks on you when I don't have to worry about being stuffed in a cage for it."


	28. Epilogue

Loki looked up from his book as the Avengers trooped into the tower's kitchen. "Looks like you guys had a great day."

"How long have _you_ been here?" Tony grumbled, "And what are you doing?"

"I've been here since I woke up this morning and saw Steve's note saying you guys had been called in. Figured this was the place to be if I wanted to know when you returned, and as long as I was here I might as well raid your kitchen, hide all your socks, and short-sheet your beds, right?" He casually reached out and snagged his boyfriend around the waist to pull him in for a kiss. "Oh, and there's an apple pie in the oven."

Steve smiled despite himself. "My favorite! You sure know how to cheer me up after a mission."

Tony glared suspiciously. "JARVIS, is this true?"

"Yes sir. When presented with multiple types of pie…"

"JARVIS, don't be obtuse. Has. He. Been. Here. All. Day."

"Yes sir. He has not left the tower since arriving at ten o'clock this morning."

"Are you certain?" Clint asked.

"Heat signature and all." JARVIS reported, sounding amused.

"Why so suspicious?" Loki put on a hurt face, "You heard the computer, I've been here all day."

"Because _somebody_ spent the day turning all the navy's submarines highlighter yellow."

Loki grinned and subtly cast an illusion so that the cover of his book no longer read A Comprehensive Treatise On Time-Release Spellcasting. "Did they really?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well that's that for this one, folks! If you head on over to my profile, I've started working on transferring the next story over, a somewhat slapstick FrostIron called "Occupational Hazards"


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